A comparative study on ANN techniques in predicting solar radiation for various meteorological locations of Bangladesh

This study concentrates on the advancement of ANN model for predicting solar radiation. In this analysis, multi-layered feed-forward ANN structure was modeled where the back propagation algorithm is applied to determine the Monthly Averaged Insolation Incident (kWh/m
²
/day) on horizontal surfaces of Bangladesh. Used data was taken primarily from NASA database. For training and testing the model, ANN tool of MATLAB was used. During testing phase, both evaluated and assessed values of solar radiation were compared statistically using Mean Absolute Percentage Error, Mean Squared Error and Regression Value. For verification of the system's performance, a comparative study was performed later on using data from Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) and Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment (SWERA) project of Dhaka University. The results have shown better accuracy in performance than other conventional solar irradiation prediction models that have been used up to now in Bangladesh.